A lot happened this week in Z-land. First, our listing count continues to grow as more and more brokerages add ther listings. We've gone from a few hundred thousand to almost 800K in just 6 weeks. Second, I was back east for business meetings and some media opportunities. I was on CNBC and Fox Business to discuss the housing climate. CNBC focused on the impact of the Fed's rate cuts on mortgage rates, and as one of my blog readers pointed out to me by email, I could have been more clear that it will take a while for the Fed action to ultimately affect mortgage rates. But the refi echo-boom is already underway. Fox Business (which was a much longer and better appearance, but unfortunately isn't on the web) focused on our recent analysis of negative equity.

I was also in Boston to teach a class on Internet strategy at Harvard Business School and to give a speech to the Real Estate Club. I went to Harvard undergrad (but not b-school) so it was fun to be back on campus. The Zillow case focused on the question of whether we should be an ecommerce company (i.e., be a brokerage like Redfin and charge commission) or be a media model (i.e., make $ on advertising and not usurp the agents' role). We have been very candid in many forums about the fact that we are a media company and we are friend not foe to agents & brokers. But the HBS crowd was almost militant in their "bring down the 6% commission" mentality. I repeatedly explained that Zillow provides free information to buyers, sellers and agents, and that commissions are a matter to be sorted out between agents and their clients. We're not a brokerage. We're not Redfin or erealty or Zip Realty, etc. It's very fashionable in the media and apparently in business schools to beat up on Realtors and on their commissions, but I refused to be baited into their game. I explained that real estate transactions are complex, infrequent, and involve huge amounts of money so they will always be professionally assisted. 

My second speech @ HBS was at the Real Estate Club which was fun because there were a lot of non-HBS people from the Boston real estate community there -- investors, agents, brokers etc. Clearly Zillow usage in Boston is very high (in fact, more than 80% of the homes in all of Boston have been Zillowed) because it was a very warm reception.